Independent blog compiled by students of the doctor-writer’s articles and speeches

Les Bleus champions du monde: des photos pour l’éternité

Dalrymple lights upon this heading in the French magazine the Point. He is reminded of

Kim Il-sung, president of North Korea for eternity.

There is, he writes,

something in the modern régime of bread and circuses that encourages such stupidity, in which a minor accomplishment counts as major and serious problems go by default.

Celebratory rioting, looting and arson

His heart swelled with patriotic relief when rioting broke out in various cities in France during the celebrations of the country’s victory.

Here, at last, was evidence that the English are not uniquely stupid and that other nations are catching up.

Some of the rioters who left the Champs-Élysées in a terrible mess

came prepared, bringing balaclavas. They smashed windows, looted stores, and attacked what in France are known as the forces of order. Nearly 300 people were arrested (more than 100 in Paris), and more than 800 cars were burned out. The fact that the forces of order felt it necessary to employ water-cannon and tear-gas suggests the problem was not on a minor scale.

But the ­reporting in the French press of these happy events, and in the Western liberal media,

was muted, to say the least. Why the reticence? Riots generally make excellent copy, none better in fact.